An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17056255

An officer in upstate New York shot and killed a teen fleeing while pointing a replica gun, police said Saturday.

    • southsamuraiEnglish
      42•6 months ago

      Ehhh, you’re dealing with an idiot kid (and all kids are idiots to some degree) and a supposedly trained professional.

      I would place the weight of fault on the officer and/or whoever trained them.

      Yeah, you should always teach your kids about firearm safety and drill into them to never, ever carry one at all until they’re adults. And that includes anything that can propel a projectile that isn’t obviously and visibly a toy.

      But the truth is that a 13 year old was target that got shot. By an adult in body armor, with training. No shot had been fired because you can’t mistake a bb gun sound for even a 22 going off. So there was no active shooter here.

      It’s another bad shooting that’s going to get swept under the rug.

      • @[email protected]English
        7•6 months ago

        On that note, 13 is more than enough to understand these things. I had bb guns when I was around 13 and always knew never to take take the orange tip off, bring it around in public, and never show it to people that didn’t understand. At the end of the day, the cop and the parents are at fault.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      28•6 months ago

      Because if cops wait around, and figure things out first, you have Uvalde all over again. People were pissed, as they should be, that police showed up, and DIDN’T shoot a kid.

      I don’t claim this is intentional on your part, but I believe you’ve created a false dichotomy. There is a spectrum of outcomes between what happened here and what happened in Uvalde.

      (and again, I’ll believe he was pointing it at them when I can see a video proving he did so)

      • @[email protected]English
        4•6 months ago

        It’s like accepting of the fact that your police is incompetent. They either shoot everyone or let someone else shoot everyone. That’s not doing their job as police.

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          3•6 months ago

          It’s a common way people try to justify their actions. As if police are a force of nature. You wouldn’t stand in the path of a tornado, why would you expect police to act on more than the most superficial analysis of the situation and with less than the most violence they can justify.

    • lurch (he/him)English
      15•6 months ago

      someone having a gun is no reason to shoot them btw… especially not if it’s a kid. that the gun wasn’t real isn’t even relevant.

      if you can’t carry a gun in public, you effectively don’t have the right to bear arms, but AFAIK NY law grants citizens that right.

      however, even if guns were illegal in NY, police should still not shoot people just for having one or waving it around. they should carefully capture the person. if police isn’t brave enough to do that, maybe you have the wrong persons for the job.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•6 months ago

        if you can’t carry a gun in public, you effectively don’t have the right to bear arms, but AFAIK NY law grants citizens that right.

        Nope. NY’s laws prohibit having a gun anywhere outside of your home.

        To make it even more ridiculous… this includes the pellet gun this kid had. In NY having a air gun is a felony weapons charge. (sections 265.01, 265.20, 265.01-a)

        • RachelRodentEnglish
          8•6 months ago

          because they’re pussies? are the most notorious killers of america afraid of a little kid with a gun? Shouldn’t have they received training about such a situation and if they did why are their first instict is to kill?

        • lurch (he/him)English
          3•6 months ago

          i don’t because they signed up to put their life on the line and pointing guns is legal

        • @[email protected]English
          1•6 months ago

          You don’t question whether the kid actually pointed the gun at them, cop says he did so he must have. Not like a cop would lie to cover his ass, right?

    • RachelRodentEnglish
      8•6 months ago

      so is it okay to have people run around and have the authırity to kill you if they see you with a weapon? (or if they lie about it)

    • @[email protected]English
      7•6 months ago

      Strange. Doesn’t the second amendment guarantee our right to keep and bear arms? But apparently the cops are allowed to murder us for it.

      I wonder when it will be okay for them to kill us for exercising free speech.

      🤔🤔

    • @[email protected]English
      6•6 months ago

      How can you mention Uvalde and say that the ONE thing cops are good for is stopping active shooters?

      • @[email protected]English
        3•6 months ago

        And tasers have an alarming failure rate. If someone was pointing a gun at you what would you do?

        • @[email protected]English
          2•6 months ago

          If a 13 year old was pointing what I thought was a gun at me? I would use the taser and try to get out of the way of where they were pointing.

          I will say, I read the article and if what the cops say is true, there were a number of compounding unfortunate circumstances. It was late at night, the kids ran when they were approached, and the kid died from a single shot. The cops didn’t pull up and unload their guns on the two kids.

          ACAB, but I’m not saying they were malicious or grossly incompetent in this case. But I still think they’re too quick to shoot first and ask questions later. I personally think they shouldn’t shoot unless shot at, that would eliminate these cases that keep happening. Teaching kids to not play with toy guns would be great too, unfortunately guns are just so deeply engrained in every aspect of American culture

    • @CrackhappyEnglish
      4•6 months ago

      While you might be right, I am angry that you are right.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•6 months ago

      If this gets mistaken for a real gun, somebody will call the cops on you, and they’ll KILL you for real!

      That’s absolutely insane, that us Americans have to think this way. Getting murdered by law enforcement shouldn’t ever be a near-certainty.

      Active shooter

      You keep using that term, but I don’t think you understand it. Unless someone has started shooting people, there’s literally no active shooter. No one would call that in, and police officers arriving on scene would also determine there’s no active shooter, if they’re actually doing their job. People might call the cops on a child with a toy gun (don’t do that), but the police officer is responsible for discerning the true situation before using lethal force.

      And a kid with a gun is just as deadly as an adult with a gun.

      I’m no gun nut, but just having a gun doesn’t make someone a threat any more than having a knife, a vehicle, a frying pan, etc. It certainly doesn’t make them an imminent threat that has to be killed immediately. The US has way too many guns, but still: just the existence of a gun doesn’t make someone a danger worthy of killing.

      #But.

      With all that said, in this actual interaction, the police stopped the boys and one of them pointed what appeared to be a handgun at the officers. I’ve long since stopped giving cops the benefit of the doubt, but if it happened exactly like they said, legal force was absolutely justified in this case. It was later discovered that it was a replica GLOCK 17 Gen 5 handgun with a detachable magazine.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•6 months ago

      Lulz only on lemmy can the most rational and sane take be downvoted and most negatively commented on. To me you make absolute sense!